a wholesale restitution weighed
supremely in Doctor Q's mind.

"One day," he resumed, "Balcom came to me in what I know now was merely
feigned excitement and fear. 'They're after us!' he cried. 'Brent and I
have done our best--but the government is after you, and we can't
protect you any longer.'

"Then for the first time Balcom told me of the real purposes of the
company, told me that he had been drawn into it by Brent. It was all a
tissue of lies--lies that drove me from my home and country. I hated
your father with an undying hate, Miss Brent.

"Well, to make the sad story short, I took my wife and children and
sailed secretly for the farthermost parts of the world. Off the coast of
Madagascar, in the Straits, a typhoon came up. The vessel was driven on
the rocks and wrecked. I was cast ashore, and I vaguely remember how,
for days and weeks, I patrolled that beach, subsisting on shell-fish,
imploring God, day and night, to restore my wife and children to me.
Then my mind gave way.

"The natives took me in, thinking me a god. They took me many miles
inland. Savages, the world over, are superstitious about the demented,
and so they treated me kindly. They installed me in a thatched hut of my
own and made me a leader.

"How many months, years, I stayed with them I do not know. But, true to
my mechanical instinct, I rigged up a forge and improved many of the
crude instruments of the natives, principally those of agriculture.

"But transcending every other feeling, I hated Brent. In my madness, I
conceived the idea that I would construct an iron giant that, upon its
completion, if I could only procure the brain of a man who had died of a
lightning stroke or other electric agency, I could, by installing this
brain in the brain cavity of the giant, give it volition, make it a
superman without feeling or conscience. It was a mad idea--but I was
mad.

"At about this time Balcom came to Madagascar. He found me and, knowing
my intense hatred of Peter Brent, he cruelly added fuel to the fire.
Already he must have known that Brent was coming to his senses and
planning his great restitution to genius.

"He promised me that if I would come to New York with him he would
secure an electrocuted brain so that I could perfect my steel automaton
and obtain my revenge. I was easily persuaded and I sailed with Balcom,
bringing the iron monster with me."

A strange light gleamed in the old man's eyes as he spoke, not the light